Note 20 — THE TRIAL OF COLONEL DESPARD.

Mr. Timbs, F.S.A., in his interesting work, “A Century of Anecdote” thus refers to Colonel Despard:—“This gallant but unfortunate officer appears to have fallen into a sea of troubles through his devoted loyalty. In the course of his service he was the companion and friend of Lord Nelson, during his co-operation with whom, at the Siege of Honduras in his zeal for the public cause, he advanced large sums of money from his own resources, for the promotion of the operation of the war. For this, as well as for his gallantry and ability, he was thanked by Parliament, but not repaid. On his arrival in England, he pressed his claims for repayment upon the Ministry; and irritated by the delays and difficulties thrown in his way by officials, he became enraged beyond control. He appealed to the House of Commons, but in vain. He then fell into pecuniary difficulties, grew excited to desperation, wrote violent letters to ministers, and having joined the London Corresponding Society, was taken up under the Act for suspending the writ of Habeas Corpus, and confined to Coldbath Fields Prison. There the eminent Lord Cloncurry (then the Hon. Valentine Browne Lawless, who himself was imprisoned in a similar way on suspicion in the Tower in 1798) found Despard, who had served many years in tropical climates, imprisoned in a stone cell, six feet by eight feet furnished with a truckle-bed and a small table; there was no chair, fire-place, or window, light being only admitted through a barred but unglazed aperture over the door opening into a paved yard, at the time covered with snow. Despard was confined, we believe, in the winter of 1797, and during his incarceration he had grown worn and wan, and of unsound mind. In talking over the condition of Ireland with Mr. Lawless, the colonel said, ‘he had not seen his country for thirty years, he had never ceased thinking of it and of its misfortunes, and the main object of his seeing Mr. Lawless was to disclose his discovery of an infallible remedy for the latter—viz., a voluntary separation of the sexes, so as to leave no future generation obnoxious to oppression.’ This plan of cure would, he said, defy the machination of the enemies of Ireland to interrupt its complete success.

“In a few years after this conversation, this poor madman, at the Oakley Arms public-house, in Lambeth, was apprehended.”

In the “Life and Times of Lord Cloncurry,” by Mr. W. J. Fitzpatrick, I find the following additional particulars:—“Some months after the Hon. Valentine Lawless’s visit to Despard, during the debates in the House of Commons on the propriety of continuing the suspension of Habeas Corpus, Mr. Courtney read a letter aloud from Mrs. Catherine Despard.

“‘I think it necessary to state,’ she writes, ‘that he was confined near seven months in a dark cell without fire or candle, chair, table, knife, fork, a glazed window, or even a book. I made several applications in person to Mr. Wickham, and by letter to the Duke of Portland, all to no purpose. The 20th of last month he was removed into a room with a fire, but not until his feet were ulcerated by the frost. For the truth of this statement I appeal to the Hon. Mr. Lawless and John Reeves, Esq., who visited him in prison, and at whose intercession he was removed. The jailor will bear witness that he never made any complaint of his treatment, however severe.’

“The sympathies of Valentine Lawless were, as usual, awakened. He expressed the greatest commiseration for Despard’s sufferings, and resolved to provide for his wife and family at Lyons (his family seat, in the County of Kildare), whenever circumstances suggested the propriety of doing so, and certain other circumstances permitted it. We trust it is not unpardonably anticipating to observe that Lawless (who had succeeded as second Lord Cloncurry in 1799) did afford the widowed Mrs. Despard a comfortable asylum within the bosom of his own family at Lyons.